Florida's wage gap has significantly widened since the Great Recession as a growing share of workers became stuck in low-paying jobs, a research team at Florida International University concluded in a report released Sunday.

Pay for the top 10 percent of wage earners in Florida grew 25 times faster than for the bottom 10 percent from 1980 to 2014, the researchers found.

From 2009 to 2012, in the wake of the recession, income for the top 1 percent of Florida earners grew by 39.5 percent, when accounting for inflation. For the bottom 99 percent, it plunged by 7.1 percent.

The report by FIU's Research Institute on Social and Economic Policy said persistent low wages give the working poor little chance to improve their lot, which "has had a corrosive effect on the quality of life and standard of living of Floridians."

The latest annual State of Working Florida report, timed for Labor Day weekend, contributes to growing evidence that the rich are getting richer and the working class remains stagnant.

"Most people I talk to say they're not making enough money; they're doing more and getting paid less," said Dennis Battistella, who coordinates a machinist apprenticeship program for the South Florida Manufacturers Association based in Pompano Beach. "At least back before the recession, there were annual raises, generally."

The Securities and Exchange Commission voted Wednesday to require public companies to disclose the pay difference between the chief executive and the average worker — a controversial measure that is sure to stoke an already...

The pay gap between workers and the boss is about to get a bit more obvious.

The Securities and Exchange Commission voted Wednesday to require public companies to disclose the pay difference between the chief executive and the average worker — a controversial measure that is sure to stoke an already...

(Dean Starkman and Samantha Masunaga)

Wages dropped when many employers pared their workforce, he said. "In most cases, if they had a high-wage person and a low-wage person, they got rid of the high-wage person. It's still a buyer's market as far as hiring."

Florida's economy has partially rebounded since the recession. The state unemployment rate dropped from 11.1 percent in December 2010 to 6.3 percent in July. Florida has added more than 580,000 private-sector jobs during that time.

But pay has crept up slowly, barely keeping pace with inflation. Since 2001, the median wage in Florida rose at an average yearly rate of 2.4 percent, from $23,337 to $31,567, according to the FIU report.

The housing crisis and economic downturn widened the wage gap largely by eliminating many relatively good-paying construction jobs, said Christopher McCarty, director of the Bureau of Business and Economic Research at the University of Florida.

"Those jobs have far from recovered," he said. "Population growth has come back, but it's not at the level it would need to be to get back to where we were."

Florida had more than 600,000 construction jobs at its peak in 2006, McCarty said. In July, they amounted to 425,700, up about 5,000 from June.

Many Floridians have turned instead to retail jobs or work in hotels and restaurants, which tend to pay much less. In 2014, 3.2 million Florida workers — 22 percent of the labor force — were in the lowest paid industries: retail, farming, forestry, fishing, hospitality and food service, the FIU report says.

The income gap has stirred intermittent protests across the nation and prompted presidential candidates of both major parties to propose ways to boost the economy and create better-paying jobs.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., has made upward mobility a major campaign theme.

He proposes to cut the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent and allow businesses to deduct 100 percent of expenses on the hope they will expand and create better paying jobs. And he has called for a federal "wage enhancement" to supplement the pay of low-income workers.

Most Democrats in Congress are pushing for a raise in the minimum wage.

Hillary Clinton, the Democratic front-runner for president, has led efforts to enact a Paycheck Fairness Act, which would allow employees to share salary information with each other and impose harsher penalties for pay discrimination.

The Obama administration, meanwhile, has issued a rule that requires businesses to reveal their "pay ratio" — the amount top executives make compared with the earnings of rank-and-file workers.

"Reducing wage disparity and income inequality will not only improve standards of living and quality of life for our workforce, but will assist in achieving a highly efficient labor market and increase the viability of a healthier economy," the report concludes.